76 flaming trombones led the big parade

[Jonathan Crawford] is ready and willing to fire things up with his flaming trombone. A couple of years back his band teacher was going through the storage room triaging instruments. This trombone suffered from a bad case of red rot and would never function well again so [Jonathan] was able to get his hands on it and get to work.

He started by sanding down the instrument and painting it with high-temperature spray paint. Flexible copper tubing intended for an ice maker was used to relocate the propane outlet inside the bell of the instrument. A barbecue igniter, controlled with the player’s left thumb, lights the flame.

The torch that [Jonathan] is using would only allow a small amount of gaseous propane to come out the nozzle. He ended up drilling out the aperture, and using a short piece of vinyl tubing to bridge the gap between the nozzle and the supplementary copper tubing. At full blast this allows liquid propane to escape so be warned.

You can see him demonstrating this indoors in the video after the break. He mentioned to us that the first time he tried this out he set off the smoke detector. You’ve got to be careful when playing with fire, whether it’s a musical instrument, or a wearable flamethrower. So, you know, don’t try this at home.

So.. whats wrong with testing outside? I can’t think of one reason I would light a fire in a house other than a fireplace. Great idea until your house burns down and you end up killing one of your neighbors when the flames leap next door.

yeah, I was disappointed that the flames didn’t differ with the sound, but I guess that’s to be expected if you think about it. I guess you’d have to have an active solution: control the gas rate with a solenoid valve with the actuation controlled by the slide position or something.

he could ‘in-theory’, depending on the local
prosecutor/jurisdictional laws – be charged
with:

(a). arson
(b). reckless endangerment
(c). criminal mischief

the insurance company could also decline to
provide coverage for damages (again would
depend on the contractual language of the
specific policy and state insurance regs).
if i was the adjuster, i would not approve
a settlement. on your own buddy ! you
burned your house down. we’re not paying
you one red cent.

A bit of a stretch to call this a flame thrower isn’t? With no air/fuel mixture it’s like setting a propane leak on fire. Nah at full blast no liquid propane will nit escape. Tip the assembly down far enough in the front liquid propane will escape regardless of the valve setting. In the event liquid propane would escape no big deal, as the flame most likely will extinguish itself soon enough.

Commenters never cease to amaze me with whether its jumping to wild conclusions with no knowledge or even research into the subject at hand. I could see how you would jump to the whole fire bad conclusion, Jonathan is obviously a young guy playing with fire… but wait perhaps he is a student that found an interesting way to tie in valid concepts of his field of study into a hobby is that so horrible or is that a good part of what this site is about?

On the more technical end of things… without sustained contact of a flame on a surface, or an accelerant on a surface, or an explosion the most likely scenario is he gets some soot on his ceiling and will have to clean and paint over it. The liquid propane disclaimer obviously came about from testing and seems easily enough avoided. So FLAME ON HAD peanut gallery and you too Jonathan! I look forward to any tweaks you make on the project and perhaps a little backstory on yourself or the project that might squelch these negative nancys.